Among the thousands of partner courses that have benefited from GOLF Business Solutions’ decade-long focus on technology, marketing and their position within the world’s largest tee-time marketplace – GOLFNOW – there are many that seek to explore additional business opportunities beyond the tee time.

While still catering to their core golfers, these facilities also hope to attract more casual players, particularly those who might value a club affiliation for social events and networking. These courses are entrepreneurial-minded and are seeking to increase event revenue from events, such as weddings, retirement parties, bar mitzvahs, corporate receptions, and the like.

Enter the new Advanced Marketing Program (AMP) from GOLF Business Solutions. AMP is designed to leverage GOLF’s technology and outbound marketing expertise to reach an audience beyond devoted golfers, and to sell products and services that complement a course partner’s existing daily fee business.

Parker Ross, Brand Specialist for GOLF Business Solutions, has been leading the effort to introduce AMP to the marketplace and uncover the full potential of this new program to further drive business success for its course partners.

“There are best practices within golf course marketing that you follow to optimize a client course’s inventory and build market share among golfers who book rounds online,” says Ross. “That’s not necessarily the path you go down if your goal is conducting a new membership drive – you’re trying to reach a different kind of golfer. Nor is it the optimal way to show your clubhouse and event amenities to non-golfing brides-to-be if you’re looking to drive wedding business. There are people in your geographic market who are very much worth targeting but who really don’t get touched in the normal course of doing business.”

Successful work in these areas requires expertise in landing-page design, paid search and social media marketing, as well as in-depth understanding of both golf course website and ad platform analytics to improve campaign performance and optimize spend across channels.

Eaglesticks recently launched a “Club 30” membership drive (celebrating 30 years in business) with the goal of selling 1,000 golf memberships at the promotional rate of $89 per year (note: Club 30 members pay a cart fee with each booking).

A similar campaign was also launched to help generate wedding leads for EagleSticks’ sales & events director, with targeted search and social media ads driving traffic to a custom-made landing page. The campaign generated nearly a dozen leads within its first month, an “exponential increase” over years’ past, according to EagleSticks General Manager Kelly Morrow.

“My comment to the GOLF Business Solutions team was, ‘You know more about technology and market reach than we do, so let’s work together,’” says Morrow. “As for memberships, our first sale came in late July, not long after the launch, and within six weeks our total was close to 100 sales. These are new people to us, more of a casual player—we definitely have the sense that they’ll be good spenders.”

“Without the marketing power of GOLF Business Solutions it would have been very difficult to get the word out about these two programs,” says Morrow. He’s unquestionably proud of the product that EagleSticks represents and sees the immense value in attracting a newer and larger audience to see it for themselves.